Bike Parking at a Timbers game last year.(Photo: Jeff Castro/BikeRacker)

Cycling soccer fans could hold the key to whether or not the upcoming Portland Timbers match at Jeld-Wen Field (formerly PGE Park) ends up in a traffic snarl in downtown Portland

On April 14th, the Timbers, hold their first home match as a Major League Soccer franchise. The newly renovated arena has a capacity of 20,000 fans (up from 16,000) and it’s located in a dense part of downtown Portland. With auto parking at a premium, the City of Portland and the Timbers are doing everything they can to encourage folks to get to the stadium without a car.

Whether or not a traffic snarl results could come down to how many people arrive by bike. To make sure there’s enough room for all of them, 400 bicycle parking spaces will be provided.

In addition to a parking meter rate increase passed by City Council last month and words of encouragement to leave the car at home from Mayor Sam Adams and Commissioner Randy Leonard, TriMet buses and MAX trains (which stop across the street from the stadium) will be running at full capacity.

Whether or not a traffic snarl results could come down to how many people arrive by bike. To make sure there’s enough room for all of them, 400 bicycle parking spaces will be provided.

Sarah Figliozzi, who manages the bike parking program at the City of Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), says the 400 spaces will be divided among two convenient locations: along SW Morrison Street (which will be closed between SW 18th and 20th on gameday) and along SW 18th (between SW Taylor and Yamhill).

The Portland Timbers are providing 300 of the bike parking spaces. 250 of those spaces are reserved for season ticket holders. The bike parking option, which comes with staffed security, was offered by the Timbers as a perk and it quickly sold out.

PBOT is adding 100 more “just to ensure there is an adequate amount,” says Figliozzi.

Figliozzi says bicycle parking will be set up approximately three hours prior to the game start and will be broken down about an hour after it’s over. One final note from Figliozzi: “Remember that the MAX trains will be at capacity on game days and they should not be planning on being able to find room on the trains for their bikes.”

You know what surprises me that they have never offered? The ability for anyone with a ticket to that day’s game to ride max or a bus to the game, for free.

Just show your ticket to the bus driver or MAX transit officer. I can’t think of a simpler way to get people to use mass transit to get to the game, especially with so many major lines running right by the stadium.

Ah, I wasn’t aware of that – better than nothing! However, I still think it still should be expanded to anyone, even with a single-game ticket. Timbers tickets should be valid as Trimet fare for 2 hours before a game/2 hours after on game day, if the city is truly serious about getting people not not use cars to get down there…

They ran at a test last year at a game with a sellout crowd of almost 16,000 – they heavily promoted the availability of bike parking and provided hundreds of spots, yet it was lightly used.

If that trend is reversed this year, I wouldn’t be surprised if they expand capacity to meet demand. Public transportation still appears to be the preferred option for attendees, possibly due to the copious amounts of beer that most have are consuming…

I’m a timbers season ticket holder (and have been for a while!) and the team actually gave STHs not only the option of a daily trimet pass and a parking deal but also an opportunity to park your bike in a secure, indoor location, presumably under the stadium or something, that I think (?) would have been monitored by timbers staff or something. Anyway, this option expired very quickly, as I think many people found it attractive. Hopefully they’ll expand it in years to come!

I am so over having to wait 10-20 minutes to be able to leave the stadium. Here in australia it is very bad. And then once i get to my car, i can’t drive it because the traffic in the parking area is so bad. Cyclying you are right is most likely the answer.

First of all, this is awesome. The Sounders make no accommodation for bikes – in fact they put up their “parking garage open” sandwich board sign directly in a bike lane and leave them there for days (well, until I move them). I haven’t ridden my bike to a Sounders game even once in 2.N years – ugh.

Secondly, I have a hard time believing you couldn’t fit more bikes in that much space.

Lastly, nice job on the trash talking billboard in SoDo – that was impressive. (bastards!)

Reminds me of an old episode of The Simpsons where Homer tries to get tickets to a minor league football game only to have the first person in line buy all 30,000 tickets to make the team look more popular than it was.

Let me see if i understand this – you dismiss soccer (the most popular sport in the world) by suggesting that there are no facts supporting that the games will be well attended – then someone supplies you with facts and you dismiss them with a reference to a Simpsons episode.

That’s the sort of logical reasoning I usually expect from bike-hating sprawl-embracing ex-urbanite NASCAR fans in the comments section of a mainstream media news website.

I understand you might find soccer boring and low-scoring, but why do you have to take a crap on the rest of us who might like it?

If the median income of Portland’s soccer fans was below $100,000 per year and the fans weren’t so elitist and pretentious, you might have a point. Otherwise, it’s just rich white people creating problems for the working man.

Looks like Timber tickets are a little more than half the price of Blazers tickets, but since, as you say no one really wants to watch soccer then there won’t actually be any traffic problems and the working man should get on just fine, right?